Tag Archives: photography

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Red-Winged Blackbird on Fence, Foggy Morning

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Red-Winged Blackbird on Fence, Foggy Morning

Red-Winged Blackbird on Fence, Foggy Morning. Calero Hills, California. April 18, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A female redwing blackbird stands atop a post of an old weathered fence among grasses.

I photographed this bird on an early mid-April morning just before fog began to clear. I frequently walk past this small pond – Castillero Pond – when I begin my hikes into the hills, oaks, and grassland of Calero Park. I’ve learned that it is often possible to find an egret here, so I usually approach the pond slowly and quietly so as not to scare the bird off if it happens to be there. On this morning it wasn’t, but I was pleased to see that the pond had filled after late-season rain, and I found that a flock of redwing blackbirds was flying around – it seems like must be mating and nesting season for them. So I left the long lens on the camera and remained quiet and was able to get fairly close to some of these small birds. While this shot doesn’t exactly fill the frame with the bird, I like the curving form of the fence as it blurs into the distance and the subdued colors in the background.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: red-wing, black, bird, blackbird, female, avian, perch, stand, beak, animal, wildlife, nature, grass, dormant, brown, weathered, worn, fence, post, rail, stand, atop, spider, web, plant, dry, lichen, old, morning, fog, mist, cloud, stock, nature

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Sunrise – Telescope Peak, Amargosa Range, Bank Ruins of Rhyolite

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Sunrise - Telescope Peak, Amargosa Range, Bank Ruins of Rhyolite

Sunrise – Telescope Peak, Amargosa Range, Bank Ruins of Rhyolite. Rhyolite, Nevada. April 1, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sunrise on Telescope Peak and the Amargosa Range of Death Valley with the ruins of the Rhyollite Nevada bank building in the foreground.

This photograph attempts to pull together three iconic elements of the Rhyolite ghost town experience: the ruins of the old bank building, the view across the Amargosa Valley to the Amargosa Range (just inside Death Valley National Park), and the snow-capped summit of Death Valley’s Telescope Peak in the first light of dawn. This photograph was made just a moment before one that I earlier posted that showed the first direct light hitting the front of the bank, and in this one I was trying to nestle the distant mountains in the curve created by the top of the old wall of the weathered bank building.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: rhyollite, ghost, town, mining, abandoned, ruins, nevada, california, usa, death valley, national park, telescope, peak, amargosa, range, mountains, valley, desert, wall, brick, sage, sky, pink, firsts light, sunrise, dawn, stock, landscape, scenic, travel

Photographs: Coastal Redwoods, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Andrew’s Clintonia

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Andrew's Clintonia

Andrew’s Clintonia. Muir Woods National Monument, California. April 11, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Newly emerging spring Andrew’s Clintonia (Clintonia andrewsiana) plant at Muir Woods National Monument, California with immature flowers.

I hope I have correctly identified this plant – with the help of a few people who contacted me after I posted the photo along with a request for plant ID help on my dan’s outside blog. The flowers are the tricky part. All of the photographs of this plant that I could find during my search for identification look different – but the plant apparently doesn’t actually blossom until a few weeks or a month after I made the photograph, so here we’re just seeing the early buds. The leaves look right. It grows in the right place – in the redwood forest and Muir Woods. And I found one online example with mature flowers that has the same single leaf near the top of the flower stalk. So I’s sticking with Andrew’s clintonia until someone comes up with a better idea!

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: Andrew’s Clintonia, Clintonia andrewsiana, andrews, flower, plant, stem, leaf, green, stalk, forest, woods, grove, redwood, floor, bud, bloom, nature, foliage, spring, muir, national, monument, park, golden gate, recreation, area, travel, scenic, stock

Commentary, Ideas

Another Photography Contest, er, Intellectual Property Rights Grab

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Some months ago I became aware of the terms of many of the photo contests on the web and in magazines – and since that time I haven’t seen more than a couple that I would even consider entering given their effect on the value of my work. (The Photo Attorney writes about one today and has written about others in the past.)

If you enter a contest it seems reasonable to assume that the company running the contest would acquire some limited licensing rights to use the winning photograph in ways logically connected to the contest and to their company in return for selecting the photograph and providing the winner some valuable prizes and publicity. For example, if a magazine has a photography contest it seems reasonable to expect that they should be able to publish the photograph in the magazine in an article announcing the winners, or perhaps even use it as a cover illustration with full credit to the photographer and with a clear connection to the contest. There should be time limits and the license should not extend much beyond those circumstances, though the terms may well spell out the ways in which the company might negotiate additional uses in the future.

However, that is not how most of these contests work. When you read the contest terms you will almost always discover some very serious issues:

  • Rather than limiting their license as to time and to types of usage logically related to the contest, most terms that I have seen acquire extensive, virtually unlimited rights to the photographer’s work. Most are written so broadly as to acquire the right to do essentially anything with the photograph, for any period of time, in any medium – and completely without compensation to the photographer and in most cases without credit to the phtographer.
  • In most cases the license extends not only to the entity conducting the contest but to a host of business partners and others that appears to be virtually unlimited. For example, the way many contest terms are written it would be entirely legal for the printing company that prints the magazine to use the entrant’s photograph in unrelated publications with entirely different clients – again without any compensation or even credit to the photographer.
  • Most onerous of all, in virtually even contest I’ve seen these terms are not limited to the contest winners. Instead, the conditions apply to every contest entry! That’s right – if you enter the contest but do not win you still will have provided a free, eternal, unlimited license to the company running the contest and to a wide range of others who might do business with those running the contest. Consider that those operating the contests acquire unlimited usage rights to  hundreds or thousands of photographs submitted for consideration. This is why the term intellectual property rights grab is often used to describe the contests.

When I’ve contacted entities running contest with such terms I have gotten a variety of responses. The response that I consider to be most disingenuous – and downright dangerous – goes something like this: “Yes, that’s what the legal department made us do, but we would never treat a contest entrant that way. You can trust us.” At this point the red flag should go up and alarm bells should ring. If they really don’t intend to grab these rights, why write contest terms that allow them to do so? Why not write the contest rules in such a way that they reflect their actual intent?

Read the contest terms very carefully before you enter any photography contest. While the lure of a prize and a bit of recognition may entice you, keep in mind that few actually win, that the judging can be quite arbitrary, and whether or not you win you will have given away rights to your work.